Signs Of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology [Hardcover]

Ricard V. Sole (Author), Brian Goodwin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465019277 | ISBN-13: 978-0465019274 | Publication Date: January 1, 2001 | Edition: First Edition

Signs of Life is an entirely new approach to the problems of understanding living systems. It applies the mathematics of order and disorder, of entropy, chance, and randomness, of chaos and nonlinear dynamics to the various mysteries of the living world at all levels. Less a set of answers than a guide to thinking about living systems, this book will help set the agenda for biology in the coming century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Deep down, we all know that living things are profoundly weird. Santa Fe Institute scientists Ricard Solé and Brian Goodwin show us the truth in Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology. Chaos theory and the life sciences are a natural combination, but it's still a wonder how fresh and intuitive the material is in their able hands. Copiously illustrated with drawings, tables, and photographs enriching the text, the book will appeal to all sophisticated readers with an interest in the larger themes of biology--major players such as evolution, development, and inheritance. The authors have carefully segregated the toughest math in sidebars, but the main body of text is still not for the faint-hearted. Chaos and complexity is innately math-heavy, and hard-core mathphobes will have to make do with skimming; still, even the innumerate will find the prose charming and engaging:

The idea that a random event can change history has been a great source of inspiration for both scientists and writers alike. We live in a universe with strong laws and much contingency. In our search for the laws of complexity we often find islands of randomness in an ocean of regularity, like the island of trickery, home of games and gambling, found by the travelers in Gargantua and Pantagruel.

With writing like this interleaved between the tables and formulas, the reader finds it easier to stay on track, and the rewards of improved understanding are exquisite. Solé and Goodwin nimbly present a necessarily complex subject to a wide audience; Signs of Life ought to become a classic among the scientifically literate. --Rob Lightner

Review

". . . an outstanding book.. . .Biologists, chemists, physicists, and a wide audience will read it with delight and intellectual profit." -- Stuart Kauffman, author of _Investigations_

"All life is here, its story told by two of the most brilliant researchers in rapidly emerging science of complexity." -- Stuart Pimm,

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465019277
• ISBN-13: 978-0465019274
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,147,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of figures and photos, very visual!, January 10, 2001

By 

Pau Fernandez (Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Signs Of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology (Hardcover)

This book is very good because it shows you a very broad spectrum of phenomena in which emergence takes place (genetics, the brain, the ants, rainforests, virus, economics, etc.). Emergence happens when a system of simple and numerous parts does something you couldn't have predicted from a description of the parts. It's full of very well chosen examples of emergence in complex systems. If you don't understand what the science of complexity *really* is about, buy it! You certainly will understand after you read it, I can assure you.

I've always hated books in which there's only text and more text. I need drawings, diagrams, things that SHOW you something and make well explained ideas even better! This book is perfect in that. Also, if you don't like mathematics, they are exclusively inside gray boxes, and you just look at them if you want, the explanation is good enough. And by the way, the boxes are just great!

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Basic Text on Biological Complexity, March 9, 2001

By 

Stanley R. Palombo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Signs Of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology (Hardcover)

Sole and Goodwin bring together a host of biological phenomena that can be explained only through nonlinear dynamics, self-organization and complexity theory. Starting with the work of Kaneko and Ko, which shows that genetically identical E. coli cells placed on identical nutrient media nevertheless grow at different rates, they demonstrate that biological systems are exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions and to unpredictable internal fluctuations. This results from the interactional nature of all biological processes. The activity of a whole organism or system of organisms cannot be predicted by summing the isolated activities of its component parts.

Complexity theory explains the discontinuities of form and behavior that characterize biological systems. The illustration of these ideas in "Signs of Life" ranges all the way from cell differentiation in slime molds and higher organisms to the interactional nature of metabolic processes, the self-organizing properties of the central nervous system, the organizations created by social insects, ecosystems in general, and the economic and cultural activities of human beings on the largest scale. Evolution is shown to be the product of interactional phenomena involving many species at least as much as the competition of individual organisms with members of their own species.

The fractal nature of complexity, resulting from the iteration of simple but universal rules, is illustrated in boxed mathematical descriptions of the phenomena being discussed. What emerges from all this is a picture of the biosphere creating a huge array of diverse organisms and organizations of organisms in a manner that remains orderly and intelligible from the viewpoint of complexity theory.

The writing is both clear and lively. "Signs of Life" illustrates the fruitfulness of the vision of a complex universe developed in recent years at the Santa Fe Institute, where Sole and Goodwin and many of the scientists whose work they describe have worked.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Advanced introduction to complex systems, November 19, 2001

By 

Mark Godfray (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Signs Of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology (Hardcover)

This is a very interesting book. Athough there is some available literature on the recent advances in complex systems, it is often too general for the readers interested in having a good picture of how the area is developed and what type of (really) new advances are taking place. I think that this book, together with some literature on chaos (particularly Ian Stewart's book "Does God Play Dice?") and self-organization (I would strongly recomend Coveney's book "The Arrow of Time") provides a very useful guide to some of the most interesting findings, particularly within biological sciences. Although the most recent breakthroughs in complex networks are not there (not surprisingly) and the range of topics is certainly broad, I think the authors did a pretty good job in presenting a well-defined picture of the importance of emergence and phase transitions in genetics, ecology, evolution and brain dynamics (to cite just a few). You might agree with their views or not, but I think their enthusiam is contagious and makes you seriouly consider these ideas. The boxes, even if not allways self-contained (more references in the final list would have been helpful) trigger further interest in knowing more about the underlying maths and physics. Given the limitations imposed by a popular science book, I think they did a good job. This book should be a must-read for everyone interested in complex systems but also to those who feel that the analytic (so called reductionist) view of reality needs to be complemented with a wider perspective. I am myself molecular biologist, and in spite of the success of my own field over the last decades, I think it's time for some fresh air. Both approaches are needed and this book can give you a first glimpse of why the two approaches are required. I enjoyed reading it and loved the final paragraph.